Gender and crisis response and recovery

The contribution of women and girls to conflict prevention, disaster risk reduction and recovery, peacebuilding and conflict recovery is often undervalued, under-utilized and under-resourced. Unless women’s needs, voices and representation are placed at the center of development efforts, transitions to stability will fail to consolidate their transformative potential.

Ensuring economic opportunities and vocational training for women refugees from Syria is part of UNDP’s efforts to support the Government of Turkey to provide Syrian refugees with access to education, healthcare, employment and social security.

In Bangladesh, UNDP partnered with UNFPA to ensure that 14,000 flood-affected women and girls were provided with emergency dignity kits containing clothing, personal hygiene items and a flashlight.

After the 2015 earthquake in Nepal, UNDP ensured that women as well as men benefitted from a cash-for-work programme. Forty percent of 4,300 temporary jobs in debris clearing went to women.

UNDP works to strengthen women’s participation in post-conflict and post-disaster governance structures, support women peacebuilders and women’s networks, and promote women’s involvement in economic recovery so that communities can “build back better.” This includes ensuring that women as well as men can benefit from employment creation; frontline service delivery; disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) programmes; and access and ownership of resources. UNDP also works to advance gender justice by dismantling the culture of impunity that may exist towards gender-based violence.